The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

IF the numbers are right, it was the 94th murder of the year.

Two gunmen came out of the bushes and as a man stopped his car outside his home in Sunset Park they opened fire, hitting him repeatedly.

The bullets hit his upper and lower body and by the time an ambulance got to the scene, the medics were unable to detect any signs of life.

94 and we are only just into October. Passing the 100 mark for yet another year seems inevitable - and I don’t want to speculate as to how high it could go as I wouldn’t want to tempt fate.

Bear in mind that we have yet to really hit the run-up to Christmas, which often sees a spike in robberies and violence in our country. Anecdotally, there seems to have been a surge in robberies lately - although without figures from the police on that, perhaps it is just knowing people who have been hit that makes it seem that way.

Amid all of this, there has been something of a reaction from government figures - at least in words.

When FNM MP Shanendon Cartwright questioned the country’s murder rate in the House of Assembly, Fred Mitchell pushed back.

Mr Mitchell, wearing his three hats as Foreign Affairs Minister, PLP chairman and Fox Hill MP, insisted the government was taking it seriously.

He said: “Every day, we are just as bothered as you are about this crime situation. I’ve asked you privately, what more is it you expect us to do?”

When the PLP came to power, they did so amid promises to tackle the crime situation - year after year of murder counts exceeding 100 suggests whatever they are doing is not having the required effects.

At the start of this year, Prime Minister Philip Davis gave a national address after 11 murders in 14 days and talked of “more intrusive policing” and warned of “more roadblocks and unannounced police action”, saying it would be “a small price to pay for the collective benefit”.

And then... nothing particularly seemed to happen.

There has been the progress of anti-gang legislation in Parliament, though that is not yet implemented.

Occassionally, after a particularly outrageous killing, a senior politician is moved to comment - but still the murders go on.

Mr Davis called at the weekend for a “reset of our young people’s minds” after the murder of a young man as he held his eight-month-old child horrified the country.

Quite what that means, who knows, because he certainly did not explain it. It certainly sounds like the kind of meaningless words you say when you don’t know what to say. Nice, but without substance.

He said: “The senseless killing that’s going on, it’s unacceptable.”

Fine, it’s unacceptable, what are we going to do to show that we are not accepting it?

He went on: “We’re doing our best to curb this vicious crime. It really requires a reset of our young people’s minds and to appreciate that there is a lot here, a lot of positive things that we can do, that they ought to be engaging themselves in.

“We have to ensure that we don’t have that many idle hands around because idle hands are the work of the devil, we are working assiduously to ensure that we have everyone engaged with our young men and women.”

To note, then, they are doing their best - and we still have 94 murders by early October. The best is not making a difference.

The rest, about ensuring everyone is engaged, that there are a lot of positive things we can do - ok, what about specifics? What are the things we can do?

A murder on Thursday outside a Superwash prompted the former Minister of Tourism, Dionisio D’Aguilar, to say: “We’re all afraid, and we hope that something is done to bring a stop to this carnage that seems to be ravaging our island.”

He added: “People are scared to come out of their homes at night because of incidences like this. So, you know, it’s always concerning this type of horrific and seemingly gang style violence, there’s always worrying, not only to the business community, but to the residents at large. We’re all afraid, and we hope that something is done to bring a stop to this carnage that seems to be ravaging our island.”

One initiative from the police is asking people to share their CCTV with police - and Mr D’Aguilar has said Superwash is hoping his company’s CCTV can play a part in finding these criminals.

In the end, though, we come back to that question of what more can the government do to tackle crime?

There is talk of steering young men away from crime before they become involved in it, and that is absolutely something to reach for, in the hope that it will change things in the long-term, but what about changing things now?

If we feel there is no more that can be done, then we accept that this is the murder count we must expect in the future.

And given the state of things, it is surprising that we do not hear more from the police commissioner on how the police will curb this intolerable rate of murders.

When the rate goes down, there would rightfully be praise for doing so. But when it does not, it is perfectly fair to ask why, and for what is being done right now.

It cannot be that we have murder after murder and all that happens is a politician shuffles in front of a microphone, mumbles a few token comments, then we move on until the gunfire rings out again.

If that is all there is, then yes, more must be done. So far, it is not enough.